1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bulb centering clamp apparatus for centering a bulb such as an onion, a garlic, a scallion or shallot or the like and for clamping the latter.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, a bulb such as an onion, a garlic or the like has widely been used habitually as a cooking material. Prior to finely cutting the bulb, however, a stalk or stem and a root of the bulb must be cut to peel off an outer cover of the bulb at an outer periphery thereof, which is yellowish brown. If an attempt is made to process a large quantity of bulbs, the processing must rely upon a mechanical technique.
However, the bulbs are irregular or non-uniform in their dimension and configuration, unlike industrial products. Accordingly, if a cutting apparatus is constructed such that the stem and the root of the bulb are cut off with the positions of cutting edges for cutting the stem and root set fixedly, the following problem arises. That is, in the case where the upper and lower portions of the bulb are simultaneously cut off to remove the stem and the root of the bulb at both ends thereof by a single pass into the cutting apparatus, the margins of the respective calyxes of the bulb are taken excessively, depending upon the dimension and configuration of the bulb, so that the effective portion of the bulb suffers a loss or becomes insufficient. Thus, it will be required to again cut off the bulb manually or by a machine.
Particularly, if ones of the bulbs, which are insufficient in cutting-off, are sorted or selected from the bulbs after cutting, there is a fear that effects or advantages due to mechanization of the cutting operation are reduced by half.
Further, the following bulb centering apparatus has been proposed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 188049/1985. That is, in the bulb centering apparatus, a lower gripper is provided for vertical movement, and an upper gripper is provided for vertical movement in facing relation to the lower gripper.
However, the bulb centering apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 188049/1985 requires a first cylinder device for moving the lower gripper upwardly and a second cylinder device for moving the upper gripper downwardly, in which the bulb is clamped between the lower and upper grippers, and is centered by the latter. Thus, an additional clamp device is required for clamping both sides of the bulb.